Elanor is an Earth-like world rich in metals. Pre-rage, Elanor was colonized as a research outpost by Stellae Zaibatsu, an industrial conglomerate focused on planetary mining and metallurgy. The colony was still in the early years of surveying when the Age of Fire erupted. Elanor itself was hardly touched by the dragons, but sector-wide chaos destroyed Stellae Zaibatsu, leaving the company’s colony isolated. Today, no one knows the eventual fate of the colonists. When recolonization of Elanor started during the Age of Ashes, the colony’s facilities remained, albeit abandoned and in a state of disrepair.

The Eugenics Commissars and Terra Prime Ring, the sector’s heavyweight in planetary mining, spearheaded the recolonization. The former organization gengineered the malgrandegulos to serve as the planet’s workforce, and the Commissars and Terra Prima Ring formed a corporate autocracy to oversee Elanor’s rebuilding and industries. These activities were focused on seven small urban centers spread in a ragged line across one of Elanor’s three continents, each located near major mineral and metal deposits. Between Terra Prime Ring’s ruthlessly efficient management and the malgrandegulos’ genetic predisposition to thriving in the sort of work environments planetary mining requires, Elanor’s recolonization was an early Imperial success.

Indeed, it so successful that Imperial control via proxies was relaxed, and the malgrandegulos were permitted self-government. The seven urban centers became independent, republican city-states, and the malgrandegulo citizens of each became increasingly competitive with each other. While this has increased exploitation of planetary resources, it has also increased conflict between the city-states, to include open war among shifting alliances.

Heavy pressure from the Empire encouraged the city-states to seek more diplomatic solutions to conflicts over land and the natural resources locked within that land. Each city-state established a diplomatic corps and exchanged ambassadors. The competing republics have since been locked in a tense cold war in which diplomacy and covert assets attempt to accomplish what conventional military action once attempted.

Adventurers and mercenaries can find ready work on Elanor, if they know who and how to ask. The city-states are eager to maintain plausible deniability and/or to be able to shift blame, and outsiders provide them the means to both ends. Spying, kidnapping, blackmail, extortion, theft, and sabotage are just a few of the activities available on Elanor for morally flexible visitors with the necessary skills.